Review: Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets

Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets by Luke Dittrich
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the style of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, this work seeks to peel away the institutionalized obscurity of the most-studied amnesiac of all time and reveal who he was, what was done to him, and who he was. Interweaved is the author confronts his own family past as his grandfather, William Beecher Scoville, was the "pyschosurgeon" that lobotomized patient H.M., real name, Henry Gustav Molaison. In Scoville's procedure-tweaking ways he went a little deeper in his tissue removal so that H.M. traded epilepsy for memory loss. H.M.'s case was widely studied from late 1957 until his death in 2008 and played a very important role in the development of theories that explain the link between brain function and memory, which feature widely in this book. The memory of that research controlled and presented without much access granted by the primary scientist investigating him, Suzanne Corkin. The author reveals that Dr. Corkin destroyed research documents and data, and failed to obtain consent from Molaison's closest living kin, using a straw man with power of attorney.

This book is enlightening about the mysteries of the brain and the popularity of lobotomy techniques into the 70s (and beyond?) and revealing about the work of Scoville research into the unfortunate Henry Molaison.

View all my reviews